After attending two webinars where people extolled the virtues of positive reinforcement, Annie was left wondering why the term seems to be so misunderstood-- or maybe she is the one misunderstanding it? While she tries to train using positive reinforcement and she believes the world would be a nicer place if people were able to identify positive reinforcement and use it more effectively, she doesn't see it as some kind of sugar-coated panacea. Positive reinforcement can be very mundane! It is why you look at your phone. It's why you put one foot in front of the other when you walk, and why you push the gas pedal to make your car move forward. If a behavior has been encouraged, it has been reinforced. If it has been encouraged because of the addition of something, rather than the subtraction of something, it has been positively reinforced. So why has the term  "positive reinforcement" gotten so mixed up with the idea of kindness? Yelling "No!" can positively reinforce a dog for jumping, and hugging a person might do the opposite of positively reinforcing a given behavior. 

Annie recorded this episode on Clubhouse and was joined by podcast listener Leeyah (@leeyahiredale) and Dallas-based trainer Beth (@rehabyourrescue). 

If you're on Clubhouse, join Annie on Thursday February 25 at 3PM ET for a discussion with SFTD apprentice Anna Heyward about her article, "Bad Dog," published in this week's New Yorker. 

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/personal-history/bad-dog

https://www.joinclubhouse.com/event/mWVGKyBY

If you need an invite to join Clubhouse (currently available on iOS devices only), text 917-414-2625

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Partial Transcript:

Annie:

I was an attendee in two different webinars earlier this month. One was hosted by the BF Skinner foundation, and the other one was also by a dog training group. But they were both CEU earning webinars, pretty legit. Both were hosted by PhDs.

One was not specifically about dog training. It was about I think the title was something like “how kindness helped me navigate the world of applied behavior analysis.” There was something about kindness.  And the other one was about race and dog training.

So I am a dog trainer and a big behavior nerd and very interested in kind of different takes on behavior, sort of tangential to dog training. So was interested in both of these presentations.   But I ended up walking away -- well, they were right after the other, one was one day, one was the next day.

And I ended up feeling kind of frustrated with both of them and tried to try to chat to the moderators while it was happening. But there were a lot of people in the room, and I couldn't seem to ask a question or say something in a way that made sense.  But the takeaway from both of them was sort of like rah, rah, rah, isn't positive reinforcement a wonderful thing?

And in the one about race, it was interesting. It was this black dog trainer who I think is, I think she's a psychologist and she was interviewing kids in, I guess she lives in like Ohio, Midwest in a very white area. And she was basically interviewing children about about her, and like working with her, and what it means to work with someone who is black, or person of color was the term that was used.

Full Transcript available at SchoolfortheDogs.com/Podcast

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